We watched every game that mattered (even cheered a bit for New Mexico against Utah, because honestly, the Lobos played harder, we liked their grit and a loss didn't compromise the Utes' trip to the NCAA tourney). We even watched games that didn't matter to us, simply because it's March and, tired of those last dark days of winter, we like watching a world filled with light because every kid on the court really, really wants to win.

We watched until our brains turned to Malt-O-Meal, until our backsides became one with the couch. It was only a warm-up for The Big Dance. We are completing our office pool brackets and I'm planning ahead. Come Thursday, no cooking or cleaning, no extracurricular evening activity. Anyone in the house wants dinner during The Dance, they know how to speed-dial Domino's.

Anyway, if I can make one observation about this annual sports gluttony, it's got to be about the miserable television ads surrounding it. Were I glued to ESPN year-round, instead of just a happy interloper in the month of March, this might not even come up. I would likely be immune to the constant din of selling half-pound bacon burgers or hemi-powered, rocket-fueled, big-boy trucks. It's new to me. And having watched an endless loop of commercials targeted straight at men, approximately age 23, I have to ask:

Guys, are you really this stupid?

First, there are the Carl's Jr. ads, which have had a successful run for more than two years now.

In this campaign, guys in rumpled clothes, 3-day-old beards and a bad case of bed head can't make a meal for themselves. They stand at the supermarket meat counter, looking as perplexed as any hungry alien who just fell to earth. They drop an entire unpeeled avocado into a blender in an attempt - HA HA - to make guacamole.

Three years ago, Carl's Jr. parent company, CKE Restaurants, ran a series of TV ads with men dressed as scientists examining a live chicken, looking for its "nuggets." The resulting uproar from animal rights groups led CKE to pull the commercials from the air. But the company explained the ad had appealed to exactly who they wanted: "our most frequent customers . . . the young male audience."

Yeah. Young and dumb.

Two other idiot guys led the pack of ads last weekend. Sonic Drive-Ins now show a couple of regular nuclear physicists sitting together in a car, eating chili dogs and tater tots, dissing each other and yukking it up.

And don't even get me started about the stupid man whose motorcycle breaks down on a dusty stretch of highway and his wife has to pick him up in the family van. "Daddy just had to get a motorcycle, didn't he," she says, with her best rubbing-it-in emphasis. Loser husband. Loser dad. Big chuckles all around.

We don't portray women in ads anymore as dumber than tree stumps, or waxing the kitchen floor in stiletto heels and pearls. That was so-o-o '50s. No one would stand for it today.

I don't know. My columnist buddy Robert Kirby might disagree, but I give men a bit more credit than Madison Avenue does. I like men. I'm married to one, and he can cook a mean stir-fry all by himself. If I handed him an avocado, I believe he would first look at it, perhaps roll it around in his palm, then ask me for a knife.

That's how smart men are. Now let's go watch some hoop.

hmullen@sltrib.com